Former president Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Florida for allegedly mishandling classified documents is being postponed indefinitely.
Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon ordered a new pretrial schedule for motions and discovery Tuesday afternoon after the classified documents case was originally scheduled to go to trial later this month.
“The Court also determines that finalization of a trial date at this juncture — before resolution of the myriad and interconnected pre-trial and CIPA issues remaining and forthcoming — would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court, critical CIPA issues, and additional pretrial and trial preparations necessary to present this case to a jury,” Cannon said in her order.
Cannon’s decision follows an admission last week by special counsel Jack Smith’s team of prosecutors that evidence was rearranged after the FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in August 2022. The government previously told Cannon the boxes remained intact.
“There are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans,” prosecutors said. “The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court,” they added in a footnote.
House Republicans have launched an investigation into the acknowledgment by Smith’s team regarding the evidence being shuffled.
Smith is prosecuting Trump in southern Florida for his alleged mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate after his presidency concluded. Classified documents with national defense secrets were contained inside of the boxes Trump repeatedly refused to hand over to the National Archives, according to the federal indictment leveled against him.
Trump is facing 40 charges in the classified documents case after a superseding indictment added three felonies to his total. He is primarily being prosecuted for allegedly willfully retaining national defense information and alleged obstruction of justice.
Trump’s “hush-money” criminal trial in Manhattan, New York, is ongoing.